ADVOCATE FOR COCA LEGALIZATION LEADS IN BOLIVIAN RACE

CHIPIRIRI, Bolivia - In nearly 50 years of growing coca, Jose Torrico
has seen army soldiers swarm across his fields to pull up his plants
and heard threats from successive Bolivian governments determined to
destroy his crop.

And like thousands of other coca farmers in this verdant, tropical
region of central Bolivia, Mr. Torrico has refused to stop growing
coca, the main ingredient in cocaine, even in the face of a
relentless United States-financed effort to stamp it out.

Now, after years of persistence, he and his fellow farmers say they
are eagerly anticipating the advent of a new era, one in which
growing coca will finally be made legal. That is, they say, if Evo
Morales is elected president on Dec. 18.

"It will be legalized," Mr. Torrico, 69, said with a broad smile as
he showed off an orange nylon tarp loaded with freshly picked coca
leaves. "This is good for us. Evo can do us favors."

Mr. Morales, a onetime leader of the coca growers federation, has
steadily become revered by the left around Latin America as an
unbending opponent of globalization. That is worrisome enough to the
Bush administration. But more alarming to American officials is that
a man who promotes coca farming - an industry central to cocaine
production - may soon lead this Andean nation.

Rising in part on his pledge to legalize coca, Mr. Morales has become
the top presidential candidate in Bolivia, and he now leads his
closest adversary, Jorge Quiroga, an American-educated former
president, by 33 to 27 percent, according to a poll conducted earlier
this month.

Mr. Morales's ascent now, at a time when President Bush holds the
lowest standing of any United States leader ever in Latin America,
has intensified a clash of cultures with Washington that shows some
of its deepest strains here.

For 20 years, Washington has sponsored efforts to eliminate coca as
part of its fight against the illegal drug trade, and Bolivian
governments have cooperated, eager for loans and other support from
international lenders.

But today Washington-backed economic prescriptions are being rejected
up and down the continent. And though the presidential race is tight,
political analysts say that Mr. Morales may have the upper hand
because of the potent anti-establishment fervor that has swept
Bolivia, forcing out two presidents since 2003.

The growing appeal of Mr. Morales, who like most Bolivians is of
Indian descent, runs deepest here in the Chapare, a New Jersey-size
swath of rivers and thick jungle where coca cultivation has for years
made Bolivia one of the world's top cocaine producers.

For thousands of years before that, however, Indian highlanders
cultivated and chewed unprocessed coca to mitigate hunger and
increase stamina. Though the Bolivian government has made growing
coca largely illegal, the bright green leaves are taken for granted
as part of Andean culture.

They are still bought and sold legally across Bolivia for chewing or
making tea, with people young and old never giving it a second
thought. Indeed, coca tea is sold in supermarkets and it is consumed
across the Andes, even in elegant hotels and offices.

While acknowledging that cocaine trafficking is a problem, Mr.
Morales and the coca growers contend that most coca in the Chapare
goes for traditional uses. Mr. Morales says that as president he
would allow the "industrial" use of coca, to make everything from
toothpaste to pharmaceuticals to soft drinks to be exported as far
away as China and Europe.

"Coca and coca tea can be industrialized to circulate
internationally," Mr. Morales said during an interview en route to a
meeting with coca farmers. "How can we not legalize, since we are not
hurting anybody?"

Erecting road blockades and battling soldiers, the coca growers have
already won victories against the Bolivian government once thought
impossible, most recently with a pact last fall that allowed each
farmer to plant up to a third of an acre with coca in the Chapare.

Today the blue, black and white flags of Mr. Morales's party, the
Movement Toward Socialism, flutter from houses in the Chapare, and
Mr. Morales is treated like a conquering hero during his frequent visits.

"Evo came up from the bottom, first as a union leader, then as the
leader of the coca growers federation," Rene Arandia, a coca growers
leader, said as he took a break from a recent meeting between Mr.
Morales and several hundred cocaleros, as the growers are called, in
the town of Lauca N. "And now he's on his way to becoming president
of the republic. For us, this is a victory."

For Washington, however, it is little short of a nightmare. American
officials and leading drug policy experts contend that, no matter
what Mr. Morales and the coca growers say, most of the coca grown in
the Chapare winds up as cocaine.

They also say that the recent pact permitting limited coca production
in the Chapare has emboldened not only coca farmers, but cocaine traffickers.

"The results are pretty clear," said Eduardo Gamarra, the
Bolivian-born director of Latin American studies at Florida
International University, who has closely tracked the drug trade.
"Coca production has expanded considerably in Bolivia, and cocaine
production has expanded considerably in Bolivia."

The United Nations said in a recent report that Bolivia produced up
to 107 tons of cocaine last year, up 35 percent from 2003. The sudden
increase has prompted warnings that cocaine traffickers are gaining
ground after several years in which Bolivia's drug crops were
substantially reduced.

"I don't think there's an attractive or viable future by becoming a
narco-state," John Walters, the White House drug czar, said in an interview.

American officials, though, have watched helplessly as Mr. Morales's
influence has grown. When they have offered opinions - like claims,
with little proof, that Mr. Morales is linked to drug trafficking -
it has only strengthened Mr. Morales's appeal.

"They accuse me of everything," Mr. Morales told a crowd on a recent
campaign swing. "They say Evo is a drug trafficker, that Evo is a
narco-terrorist. They don't know how to defend their position, so
they attack us."

As president of the so-called Six Federations, a confederation of
coca growers, he molded it into a powerful political force that
propelled him to Congress.

Mr. Morales is well aware of the debt he owes his base. "If not for
the Chapare, if not for the Six Federations," he says, "there would
not be an Evo Morales."

Though 20,848 acres of coca was uprooted in eradication efforts in
2004, farmers keep planting it. They say they have no choice but to
grow coca, since other crops fare poorly here and American-financed
efforts to encourage them to switch to legal crops have stumbled.

Mr. Torrico's 20 acres are filled with crops like bananas, fruit,
yucca, coffee and cacao. On a tour of his plot, though, he listed off
the hurdles he faces making ends meet, from high transportation costs
to bottom-basement prices for most of his crops.

Coca, on the other hand, earns him as much as $162 dollars a month.
It is not a windfall, even by Bolivian standards, but it is a living, he said.

"With coca, I was able to send my children to study," said Mr.
Torrico, who has eight children. "The other stuff, the citrus fruit,
the bananas, give us nothing. Coca is what sustains us here."